Middle of the Night Book Review

I can't sleep, and I have no idea why. I did fine for 2.5 hours and then found myself inexplicably awake and antsy. I moved to the couch, read my book (Water for Elephants) for a bit, got groggy and thought I was drifting off but nooooo. I could hear a psychotic dog through the closed windows, and my body just wouldn't rest. Aargh! I have no choice, I must blog, and have found myself at the computer eating pie (the last piece) once again.


Last night (technically it still feels like tonight) was our Ward book club discussion of To Kill A Mockingbird. I had been feeling a little frustrated (due to my chronic struggles with literary amnesia) that I had to reread the book, even though I had read it for my other book club not so long ago (though I can't remember when). But in the space of the 24 hours (foolishly I started too close to my deadline) I had to read and listened to the audio book (so helpful when I needed to do other things like blog, shower, do laundry etc.,) I found myself falling in love with this book all over again and actually feeling grateful that I had to reread it. Go figure.

I have a ton of quotes from this book, but can't weed them out, so skim if you must. I'm hoping since I've highlighted and typed up all of these quotes that I won't forget this book again!

18--Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

24--"There's some folks who don't eat like us," she whispered fiercely, "but you ain't called on to contradict 'em at the table when they don't. That boy's yo' comp'ny and if he wants to eat up the table cloth you let him, you hear?"

30--"First of all," he said, "if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view----until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

34--Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill.

45--"You are too young to understand it," she said, "but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of --oh, of your father." "What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn't be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just some kinds of men who--who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."

46--"The things that happen to people we never really know. What happens in houses behind closed doors, what secrets--"

76--"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started is no reason for us not to try to win."

76--"This time we aren't fighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this is still our home."

89--I scurried to my room and went to bed. Uncle Jack was a prince of a fellow not to let me down. But I never figured out how Atticus knew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that I realized he wanted me to hear every word he said.

90--"I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."
"Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

98--"If your father's anything, he's civilized in his heart. Marksmanship's a gift of God, a talent--oh, you have to practice to make it perfect, but shootin's different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn't shoot till he had to, and he had to today."

99--"Atticus is a gentleman, just like me!"

100--"She's an old lady and she's ill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever she says to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad."

100--"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived."

104--"When summer comes you'll have to keep your head about far worse things...it's not fair for you and Jem, I know that, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down--well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you'll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn't let you down. This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience--Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man."

105--"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

108--"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody...I'm hard put, sometimes--baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you."

112--"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

115--She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl."

126--"Folks don't like to have somebody around knowin' more than they do. It aggravates 'em. You're not gonna change any of them by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, and when they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language."

128--Today was Sunday, and Aunt Alexandra was positively irritable on the Lord's Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset. She was not fat, but solid, and she chose protective garments, that drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Aunt Alexandra's was once an hour-glass figure. From any angle, it was formidable.

134--I know now what he was trying to do, but Atticus was only a man. It takes a woman to do that kind of work.

143--"The thing is, what I'm tryin' to say is --they do get on a lot better without me, I can't help them any. They ain't mean. They buy me everything I want, but it's now-you've got-it-go-play-with-it. You've got a roomful of things. I-got-you-that-book-so-go=read-it." Dill tried to deepen his voice. "You're not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with other boys, they don't hang around the house worryin' their folks."

155--Atticus and Jem were well ahead of us, and I assumed that Atticus was giving him hell for not going home, but I was wrong. As they passed under a streetlight, Atticus reached out and massaged Jem's hair, his one gesture of affection.

157--"Mr. Cunningham's basically a good man," he said, "he just has his blind spots along with the rest of us." "so it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses, didn't it? said Atticus. "That proves something--that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children."

201--"Cry about the simple hell people give other people--without even thinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they're people, too."

216--"Atticus Finch won't win, he can't win, but he's the only man in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case like that. And I thought to myself, well, we're making a step--it's just a baby-step, but it's a step."

218--"Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell's shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that's something I'll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody and I'd rather it be me than that houseful of children out there. You understand?"

220--The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it--whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash."

221--"There's nothing more sickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage of a Negro's ignorance. Don't fool yourselves--it's all adding up and one of these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not in you children's time."

222--"You've many more miles to go, son. A jury's vote's supposed to be a secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant."

227--"If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time...it's because he wants to stay inside."

229--Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling was what Aunt Alexandra called being "spoiled."

233--"She gave Miss Maudie a look of pure gratitude, and I wondered at the world of women. Miss Maudie and Aunt Alexandra had never been especially close, and here was Aunty silently thanking her for something. For what, I knew not. I was content to learn that Aunt Alexandra could be pierced sufficiently to feel gratitude for help given. There was no doubt about it, I must soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladies rocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water.

243—There was one odd thing, though, that I never understood: in spite of Atticus’s shortcomings as a parent, people were content to re-elect him to the state legislature that year, as usual, without opposition. I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to.”

247—Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again.

273—“If this thing’s hushed up it’ll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I’ve tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I’m a total failure as a parent, but I’m all they’ve got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I’ve tried to live so I can look squarely back at him…if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn’t meet his eye, and the day I can’t do that I’ll know I’ve lost him. I don’t want to lose him and Scout, because they’re all I’ve got.”

274—“You’ve got children of your own, but I’m older than you. When mine are grown I’ll be an old man if I’m still around, but right now I’m—if they don’t trust me they won’t trust anybody. Jem and Scout know what happened. If they hear me saying downtown something different happened—Heck, I won’t have them any more. I can’t live one way in town and another way in my home.”

279—Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.”

279—“As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else left for us to learn, except possibly algebra.”

281—“Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn’t done any of those things…Atticus, he was real nice…” “Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them.”

It turns out that Jordan grew up with the girl who was leading our book club discussion, so I emailed her to invite her to join us. It was fun to have her there, and she got to reunite with her old friend.

**Have you read this book?
Do you love Atticus as a role model for parenting?
Will you read this book?**